Americans vs. coronavirus. Why I like our chances.
We’ve been here before, many times and in many ways as Americans.
The feeling of uncertainty. That awful twinge of panic. A nervous feeling in the stomach. That circle spirally around in our collective mind.
The coronavirus outbreak is the latest.
The attack on American soil on September 11, 2001.
A war in a far away land way more than 58,000 of our kids returned from in flag-draped coffins.
The AIDS crisis.
A deep recession with tanking markets, massive layoffs and dwindling home values combining into one financially devastating storm person-byperson, family-by-family.
Talk to those of a certain age — and they can vividly recall, nearly six decades later, exactly the moment they heard President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
The so-called “Greatest Generation” lived through a fullblown depression and was forced to prevail on two fronts during World War II. That followed World War I.
Our nation had a civil war during which an estimated 620,000 Americans killed other Americans. It was two percent of the population at the time.
The coronavirus, whether it ultimately becomes extraordinarily widespread or not, is a crisis.
The feeling of uncertainty has already made it so.
The one certainty is we will bounce back.
The hope is we learn from this, as well.
One of our problems is we often drop our guards after a while and stop paying attention to history.
The lessons of the Great Depression didn’t hold decades later, and we found ourselves in a similar crisis. The lessons of Vietnam lasted even fewer years.
Did we, honestly, heed the warning shots of the H1N1, Swine Flu, Bird Flu and Ebola scares?
What’s the balance between being paranoid and understanding science and just common-sense societal preparation?
Psychologically, hopefully we gain perspective from this crisis.
So much has gone well since the recession. The 401(k) plans up, the unemployment-rate down.
Yet, there has been constant bickering and nastiness which has infiltrated our society.
There has been a general lack of gratitude about the good times.
In the world I run, sports, there has been a loss of perspective. My gosh, look what the Astros did. If you attend one university, do you really hate another one because of football or basketball?
The sports world has come to a screeching halt. I feel empathy for the athletes who are missing their shot to partici
pate in postseason tournaments, collegiately and high school.
I would urge the billionaires who own professional sports teams to dig relatively shallow into their deep pockets — and compensate those put out of work by stoppages.
And I hope all of us just use this time to not only stay healthy and safe, but refresh our minds about what is really important.
Control what you can. Appreciate what is good. Understand nothing is more fickle than life. The proverbial rug can be pulled out from any of us at anytime.
And it’s not what happens, but how we react to it and subsequently learn from it that defines us.
Most of you understand that because you are Americans. It’s in your DNA.
History bears it out. This is just a reminder.